


(2=1)

by moomin (kokuchim)



Series: Commissions [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 23:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19896454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokuchim/pseuds/moomin
Summary: Hold my hand, don’t let go.





	(2=1)

**Author's Note:**

> For Clai
> 
> Thank you so much for commissioning me to write you fluff, my favorite genre. 💗

(7 years ago)

There is a boy, waiting next to another boy in a corridor. It’s white, spacious, modern. The other boy is gangly, like him, with big eyes and an easy smile. The kind that says monthly dental check-ups and an immaculate oral hygiene routine since birth. He should know, he’s been in and out of commercials since his mother deemed him old enough to walk. His mom’s even set up his meetings to the dermatologists to get his hair all removed like he’s wanted to. He’s never liked them on his body.

It annoys him.

It annoys him like every other thing about his body is. Too lanky. Short torso. Nose too big for his face. Thin lips. All skin and bone and no meat.

Skinny Skinny Skinny.

His mind isn’t a very good place to be in, a lot of the times but he tries. Oh, he tries. He spends his nights drowning out the bubbling whispers and steady insecurity sliding through his skin like water, like the slender slope of a bone-white hand before reeling him under.

“What’s your name?” The boy with the pretty eyelashes asks him.

“Jeno,” he replies curtly. Courteous. Polite.

“I’m Jaemin. Are you waiting for the training program to start too?”

He nods.

“Me too, I’m nervous. Never been in this kind of thing you know?”

“Me neither.”

Silence reigns between them again. This time, it’s less stifling. Above them, the clock ticks over and over. Fifteen minutes left until their first lesson.

“Are you scared?”

A curious glance next to him, shows the boy holding a determined glint in his eyes, if only to hid the crippling anxiety lying beneath the tenseness of his body and the rigid posture he holds. “No,” Jeno lies.

“Liar,” the other boy says before bumping his shoulder. “It’s alright to be afraid.”

“Sorry,” Jeno says. Shame burning in his stomach for having been caught. He shrugs, the empty space where the boy’s skin meets his burns. He finds, he rather likes it.

A warm hand settles on his shoulders.There’s a gentle smile on Jaemin’s face. Like the warm glow of a candle and the soft pink of blushing sunrise dusting his cheeks. “Don’t be, let’s start over. I’m Jaemin and I’m new, and I’m nervous as hell and I want to be your friend.”

Jeno leans in closer, almost supplicant in his demeanor, bending forward in an small bow against the horizon of Jaemin’s blinding smile. “Jeno, I’m scared and boring but if that’s okay with you, I’d love to be your friend.”

There is a boy, waiting next to another boy, in a corridor, empty and spacious, no longer alone with a future waiting for both of them to seize it. There is a hand holding his hand, like vigilant watchers against the coming tide, but there is also another boy, with dark hair and moon for eyes who falls in love with another boy, too young, too naïve and too inexperienced but that’s a story for another time.

(4 years ago)

They’re lucky, this a boy with raven hair knows.

Luckier than most children their age. They’ve both got middle class, supportive families. Good looks. Healthy bodies and a bright glittering future just close enough for them to grasp it with the laurel of being monster rookies bestowed upon them. Yet, above all Jeno is most thankful for the boy curled up next to him on the practice room floor, breathing heavily, eyes staring holes in the ceiling as they go through the forty-ninth, fiftieth, the numbers blur together at this point, practice session. Exhaustion settling into their joints with every movement timed the beat of a thrumming baseline, to a knife point precision against a ruler.

“Do you think I’m going to make it?” Jaemin asks.

The boy is gangly. Legs and arms too long for his body. Unused to the extra height and weight he’s put on. His voice is the steady crackle of a pop tart or a crushed egg shell. Uneven. Endearing. Oh so lovely.

Jeno holds his hands instead. Twisting his fingers until they align perfectly in the empty grooves between skin and muscle and bone. If only to fill the blank space in between and banish away the uncertainty Jaemin feels.

“We’ll get through it, together,” he says quietly into the noise, into the void, into a nameless, glittering future he only wants if this boy is beside him all the while.

The hand he’s holding is sweaty, shaking and yet, Jeno can’t find it in himself to let go.

(Present)

Jaemin is a mystery to him even seven years down the line.

One this boy wishes to unravel layer by layer until the flesh is exposed and he’s finally able to see him for who he truly is.

On some days he’s too excited. On other days, he’s too withdrawn. Staying inside his room all day watching documentaries about the universe and scrolling down subreddits trying to decipher the answers to the universe. These days, Jeno rather enjoys lying down next to him. He couldn’t do it for a year since Jaemin had to take that gap year to recover. It was a nightmare, not knowing whether the person he cherishes the most would be able to stay with him and live out their dream.

He misses him. Even when they aren’t apart. Even more when they are.

He rather likes being able to stretch out his hand and take hold of the other boy’s wrist and feel the pulse point against his fingers to remind him he’s still here.

“Jeno do you know that otters like to hold hands when they’re sleeping?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“It’s so they don’t float away from each other, isn’t that cute?”

Jeno hums in response, too busy playing with the bony ridge of Jaemin’s wrist. The song they’ve been practicing all week, settling in the thrum of his voice, held in the caress of a mouth and the steady vibration of his lips. “Doesn’t that sound a lot like us?”

Jeno leans up to nuzzle against him, nose to nose like an eskimo. Side to side. Left to right. “I can’t believe you’re calling me an otter,” he replies playfully.

“No romantic bone in you at all,” Jaemin says, smiling into a small kiss he ghosts on the plumpness of Jeno’s bottom lip. “I’m saying I want to hold your hand all the time this year.”

“What about next year? And the year after that and the year after that next year?” He teases, chaining their fingers together in a lock, in it’s own embrace, their legs tangled up in each other on Jaemin’s comforter. He’s gone too far on the fabric softener again, another whiff and he realizes its his. A sly gaze on Jaemin’s lips and a wiggle of his eyebrows makes Jeno lean in to kiss him again, if only to remove the smugness residing in the corner of his lips.

“We’ll hold each other’s then too so don’t get tired of me,” Jaemin whispers in the shell of his ear, breath soft and warm and comforting. “Promise?”

Jeno nods, smiles with his eyes, before cuddling in next to him, silently reading along to the answers to Jaemin’s burning questions about the universe. He only hopes that Jaemin still finds things to love about him months, years from now. Their hands, held together, like a light house, like a day tower, like two twisting vines roping around each other as they brace through for the ride of their lives.

Two becoming one.


End file.
